A spokesman for the Senate office of Veterans Affairs said he had no information about the ceremony. It is presumed it was pre-empted by the midterm election.
“We have also learned the U.S. Mint is striking a coin in recognition of what we’ve done,” Smith continued.
Each Congressional Gold Medal made by the U.S. Mint is unique because there is no standard design.
The Congressional Gold Medal is the highest award that the U.S. Congress can give.
The Airmen, according to Smith, would be the largest group to receive the award.
“There were 992 Black men who received their silver wings, identifying them as military aviators,” he said. “Out of those there are about 200 still alive.”
The Continental Congress first authorized the commissioning of the Congressional Gold Medal during the Revolutionary War, and was designed to originally recognize military leaders in battle.
While Gen. George Washington was the first recipient in 1776, the award would eventually focus on civilian achievements after the institution of the Medal of Honor in 1861. Its present-day focus: to acknowledge singular acts of exceptional service and lifetime achievement.
Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandela were recent recipients.
In 1941, several months before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the Army Air Force began a program to train Black Americans as military pilots near Tuskegee, Alabama.
Retired Capt. Bill Cousins, a member of the 99th Pursuit Squadron, says the importance of recognizing everyone who served in every capacity under all the auspices of the Tuskegee Airmen as a whole should not be minimized.
“Of the combined resources of the 99th, 332th, and 477th put together to fight, the pilots represented but one tenth of personnel,” said Cousins. “So there are many others to consider as well.”
Jeff Schrade, Director of Communications for the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, reiterated Cousins’ concern.
“I have talked to several Tuskegee alums who espoused that same issue (inclusion),” said Schrade. “You had repairmen, cooks and grounds crew who didn’t fly but made sure the pilots were taken care of.
“One thing’s for sure – they (pilots) couldn’t fly without them.”
Schrade says this it what makes this award unique.
“Unlike the Navaho Code Talkers, another group that valiantly contributed to the war, we are talking about specific skills as opposed to a cumulative effect of a combined effort. If you were a code talker, you were a code talker.
“To insure all facets of what makes a particular unit successful be so duly recognized is what this should be about,” said Schrade.
During WWII, the Tuskegee Airmen were credited with destroying 261 enemy planes, doing damage to 148 other opposing aircraft, flying 15,553 combat sorties and 1,578 missions in the theatres of North Africa and Italy.
Sixty-six of the airmen were killed in combat and another 33 were shot down and became prisoners of war.
In escorting over 200 bombing missions, the Airmen never lost an American bomber to an enemy fighter. So feared by the German pilots were the Airmen, that they were referred to as the “Schwartze Vogelmenshen” (Black Birdmen)
Capt. Smith says the telling of the story of the Tuskegee Airmen is important, and says everyone was uplifted by the Home Box Office production of the same name.
“One of the executive producers of that project was an Airman,” Smith explained. “His name was Robert Williams, and he was born in Iowa.”
As to the degree of authenticity of the film, Smith said one element was amiss.
“In the film, they had us flying P-51 fighter planes—that wasn’t quite true. They didn’t allot P-51s to us until the war was just about over.”
But groundswell for more information about the Airmen has gathered more momentum.
In conjunction with the Gold Medal award ceremony, a documentary film on the Airmen will be shown. The film, produced by the Pennsylvania Veterans’ Museum, chronicles the history of the units, according to Capt. Smith. “The bulk of the documentary centers around three of the Airmen: Lt. Col Lee “Pops” Archer, who is the only Black Ace in WWII history; Charles McGee, who flew more combat missions than any other pilot in military history (409) through three wars; and myself.
“Congressman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and Curt Weldon, D-Pa., were responsible for the legislation, and the film will end up as part of the curriculum in all Pennsylvania schools,” Smith said.
Sen. Larry Craig, chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, in a prepared statement said the following: “This is a much deserved award and I am happy for those who will receive this important recognition on behalf of a grateful nation. The successes of the Tuskegee Airmen helped win the war and helped breakdown racial stereotypes.”
The Gold Medal is being awarded to the airmen, said Rangel, not just for their performance during the war but also for their perseverance when they came home.
“The sad part of the story,” Rangel told CBS News recently, “is when they came home, they were just Black men who served their country and were subjected to the same discrimination that existed before their heroic acts.”
Retired Lt. Col. Herbert Carter, who was one of the first Black fighter pilots and an original member of the Tuskegee Airmen, said they faced the same bigotry while they were serving.
“Our philosophy was that the antidote to racism and separatism was excellence in performance,” Carter told CBS News. “We were damn good!”
They certainly were. |
